The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais dealt serious blows to voting rights and fair representation. The Court’s conservative majority gutted Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was a critical safeguard against racial discrimination in voting. While the Court did not declare Section 2 unconstitutional, it set new requirements that are nearly impossible to satisfy, because they require evidence of intentional racial discrimination. The Callais Court went on to invalidate a Louisiana congressional map that had been designed to remedy racial discrimination by creating an additional majority-Black district. The Court struck down the map as unconstitutional and, in the process, ignored clear congressional intent and disrupted decades of legal precedent.
Read the full brief on the Callais decision
Justice Alito’s majority opinion disingenuously calls the Callais decision a mere update to Section 2’s legal standards. In reality, the decision eviscerates Section 2 and reflects the conservative majority’s ongoing assault on voting rights law and race-conscious policymaking. As Justice Kagan’s dissenting opinion declared, the ruling is just the “latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”
Districts designed to protect voters of color can be sliced up to draw districts that create partisan advantages, and these gerrymanders will go unchecked.
But the impact of the Callais case will be even more far-reaching because of the Supreme Court’s prior decisions on partisan gerrymandering—the drawing of electoral districts designed to give one political party an advantage over another. The Court has held that federal courts cannot rule on partisan gerrymandering claims. This effectively gives lawmakers freedom to redraw congressional districts to favor one political party over another. As a result, after Callais, districts designed to protect voters of color can be sliced up to draw districts that create partisan advantages, and these gerrymanders will go unchecked.
In the weeks since Callais was decided, the decision has already spurred a flurry of mid-decade partisan gerrymandering in key states such as Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina, to advance Republican control of the House of Representatives after the 2026 elections. The Louisiana governor went so far as to cancel an active primary election and discard 45,000 already-cast ballots to redraw congressional maps. We can expect that more congressional gerrymandering will occur in advance of the 2028 elections and that federal, state, and local bodies of government will come into play as post-census redistricting begins after 2030.
Read the brief to learn more about the impact of Callais
The Callais ruling clearly signals that we need new strategies to enhance voter empowerment.
Yet, this political crisis is also an opportunity. Callais has already become a catalyst for mobilizing communities of color and for strengthening their efforts to engage in redistricting and electoral politics. Callais highlights the need for immediate-term legislative fixes, such as the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Redistricting Reform Act, which should be updated and reintroduced in Congress. But more critically, the Callais ruling clearly signals that we need new strategies to enhance voter empowerment. Now is the time to enact broader solutions, including state-level voting rights statutes, redistricting reforms, and electoral systems that promote proportional representation.
